Carrie Mae Weems: A Retrospective on The Kitchen Table Series, 1990
By Jesse Anderson
Women have pioneered photography since its inception in the nineteenth century. A new and rapidly developing artform, women had the freedom to participate in a creative field which was not dominated by centuries of male artists. With increasing societal freedom, women took to the streets and to the studio to capture the world with a feminine lens in a completely new way. Thus, the photographic canon is rife with female icons such as Dorothea Lange, whose image Migrant Mother is imprinted on the conscience of anybody who views it. Photography carved a space for women to demonstrate their bravery, their intelligence, but most importantly, their diverse and intricate view of the world which they inhabit.
The canon of female photographers includes women such as Francis Benjamin Johnson and Dickey Chapelle, who became legends of photojournalism. Chapelle ventured to the battlefields of the Vietnam war for her photojournalism career and was tragically killed by a landmine in 1965. The era of the housewife was clearly over.
Photography became a powerful medium for women to shatter boundaries and challenge stereotypes. This versatile art form transcended its traditional documentary role, allowing the feminine perspective, long overlooked, to be harnessed in a literal sense. The male gaze has dominated art history, valuing women by their ‘to-be-looked-at-ness’. Female photographers showed a reversal of this narrative, instead showing us what they were looking at, and how.
Carrie Mae Weems, Untitled, from The Kitchen Table Series, 1990, Gelatin Silver Print
Carrie Mae Weems is among the most talented photographers of the twentieth century. Her career-making project, The Kitchen Table Series, 1990, revels in its simplicity. In a stripped back scene, Weems rotates people and props, investigating self, relationships, motherhood, and the viewer. In the composition of the images, symmetry is created in the placement of the table and the single overhead light (the only lighting for the photographs). It illuminates only a small, central portion of the photographs, leaving that out-with its light in muted darkness. The directive lighting gives a sense of intimacy, quietness, and evening, but also tells the viewer exactly where they should be looking. We are looking at a composed piece of artwork, with a purpose. Placing herself in the frames, Weems deconstructs the boundary between photographer and subject. She exists as both the artist and the art. As if looking through a keyhole into a private room, Weems offers us a glimpse into something intimate, personal, yet simultaneously staged. In some of the photographs, Weems gaze meets ours over the tabletop, past the unidentified figures which sometimes also occupy the image, as if to ask us what our role in the construction is- as if she shares some secret knowledge with us. Weems frees herself from the constraints of the male gaze, present in too many images of women in art museums, by her self-placement in her images. Weems is in complete control of the representation of self which her images pose. She does not directly identify herself in her images, referring to her persona in the titles as ‘woman’ instead. In doing so, Weems universalises her persona, making herself a muse of every woman, of everybody who connects to her work.
Carrie Mae Weems, Untitled (Woman and Daughter with Children), from The Kitchen Table Series, 1990, Gelatin Silver Print
In exhibition, our interpretation of the narrative which Weems writes is solely dependent on the order in which the paintings are arranged. This builds on the theme of women as individuals who oscillate between roles: lover, mother, friend, daughter, human. In some images, we see Weems’ persona engaged in a youthful, sexy relationship with a man. In others, she is alone, curled up with her head in her arms. Desolate. In others, alone again, she plays cards, looking very satisfied. Or feeds a bird. Or pleasures herself. She is laughing with friends, then crying with friends. She is sitting with her daughter, then sitting for her mother. The slight changes which are made in setting – different wall hangings, the sudden, brief appearance of a birdcage – suggests the movement of Weems’ persona through life, and though change. We see the different people she, and we, become as she passes through time. Weems explores the way we change in the constant frame of our lifespan. Every image in the series was taken in Weems’ own home, her own kitchen, taking what has been traditionally considered as a female space and using it to explore the intricate familial and personal politics of family life.
There is a very human silence which permeates these images. In greyscale, they suggest to us a timelessness, unrestrained by location or period. Though Weems suggests to us the narrative of one woman’s experiences, there are universal themes to her work which draw the eyes, and the hearts, of all who look upon it. If you have experienced love, loneliness, friendship, family, contentment, or desolation, you will find something to connect to in these images. Weems opens up her photographs to engage us as active participants in her world. Are we sitting at the end of the table?
Carrie Mae Weems, Untitled (Woman and Phone), from The Kitchen Table Series, 1990, Gelatin silver print
In the 1980’s Weems attended Berkely, California, where her interest in photography was piqued by its use in the social sciences for observation. Her photographs definitely do have a documentary feel, steering clear of any kind of abstraction, only emphasised by their black and white tones. The Kitchen Table Series was not Weems’ first photographic work, but it was the series which justifiably earned her accreditation as one of the most influential American Artists of the present day. Her work, both new and old, is still exhibited in museums, most recently (and closest to us) the Barbican, in London, which held the exhibition Reflections for Now, which ran from June to September of this year, including photographs, film, and installations. Her film installation, The Shape of Things (2021) examined systematic racism in the US, and the history of violence in the country.
Since the 1980’s, Weems has proven herself an active participant, observer, and documenter of history, engaging and contributing to the relatively young but illustrious canon of photography. While her oeuvre is now, in 2023, temporally and geographically diverse, the authenticity, the confident simplicity of The Kitchen Table Series remains the work which has stayed with me, and which will likely follow you home to your own kitchen table this winter.
Notes:
“Around the Kitchen Table: Carrie Mae Weems & Laura Letinksy” Denver Art Museum, accessed November 22, 2023, https://www.denverartmuseum.org/en/blog/around-kitchen-table-carrie-mae-weems-laura-letinsky
“Carrie Mae Weems”, barbican, accessed November 23, 2023, https://www.barbican.org.uk/CarrieMaeWeems
“Carrie Mae Weems ‘The Kitchen Table’ series among works added to VMFA permanent collection” See Great Art, accessed November 25, 2023, https://www.seegreatart.art/carrie-mae-weems-the-kitchen-table-series-among-works-added-to-vmfa-permanent-collection/
“Our Selves: Photographs by Women Artists from Helen Kornblum”, MoMA, accessed November 22, 2023, https://www.moma.org/audio/playlist/321#tour-stop-4194
“Revisiting Carrie Mae Weems’s Landmark ‘Kitchen Table Series’” Jacqui Palumbo, Artsy, accessed November 24, 2023, https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-revisiting-carrie-mae-weemss-landmark-kitchen-table-series
“The Kitchen Table Series, 1990” Carrie Mae Weems, accessed 23 November, 2023, https://carriemaeweems.net/galleries/kitchen-table.html
“The Kitchen Table Series” Cleveland Art, accessed November 23, 2023 https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2008.116
“Trailblazers of light: Women Photojournalists”, CNN: World, accessed November 23, 2023, https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/06/world/gallery/trailblazers-of-light-women-photojournalists/index.html